Cool thing alert: people are going nuts for this compostable cling wrap! Really helpful when you’re cooking some (or lots) of your weekly food ahead of time.
The best way to be sure you stay on track and that your grocery budget doesn’t go to waste is to use a meal planner!
I’ve shared a few months’ worth of my weekly meal plans with you to help get you started. Have a look at the one below, then find ALL of them PLUS a blank planner for YOU to use on this page!
You’ll notice I eat very simply, and I repeat foods often. That’s because the quickest route to over-spending on groceries is thinking you need to eat something different at every meal.
My advice: Get boring. Repeat meals. Eat leftovers. Cook in bulk. With the time you save, you could read my book. Twice!
This week, I’m pulling from the following websites:
- Real Food Liz: Roasted carrot hash with sage, cinnamon and bacon
- Real Food Liz: Easy espresso-rubbed ropa vieja with smoky sweet potatoes
- A Girl Worth Saving: Slow cooker shredded pork
- Primal Palate: Beef liver & onion meatballs
And the following recipe books (if you don’t have ’em, improvise or Google a similar recipe!):
- The Paleo Foodie Cookbook: Paleo Tabbouleh Salad (recipe available FREE online at Hollywood Homestead)
- The Paleo Foodie Cookbook: Slow cooker chocolate chicken molé
- The Ancestral Table: Colcannon recipe (potato, sausage and kale dish)
Again, download the blank meal planner and see 2 months’ worth of meal plans here.
HERE’S HOW I DO IT: I fill in the meals I plan to eat in the chart. As I go, I add ingredients I need to the shopping list (I don’t show my shopping list below, in case you’d like to use the plan for yourself). Easy!
Click the image for a larger view, or to print or save this week’s meal plan, view and save the online file or download the zip instantly.
This week, I’ll make big batches of hard-boiled eggs, sweet potatoes, chili, and double-batches of everything as I go – so I’ll have leftovers galore. I use PaleoChef salad dressings!
More info:
- These are “unofficial” meal plans. This is how I do it, and what I eat – this isn’t an official “meal plan program.”
- Still, checking out what I’M doing is a great way to get ideas for YOURSELF.
- I don’t usually snack; if I do, it’s hard-boiled eggs, nuts, coconut flakes, sardines (yep, sardines) or a PaleoKit.
- COOK A FEW BIG BATCHES OF A FEW DIFFERENT THINGS ON SUNDAY (ie a bunch of sweet potato, meatballs, chili or hard-boiled eggs). You can pull from these all week.
- I pull from FREE online recipes (which I link), and I also pull from recipe books I own. You might not have those books. Either get ’em, or improvise by inserting your OWN recipe! I’m not trying to make your life difficult by cooking from books you don’t have. I’m just using all the resources I have, and I encourage you to do the same!
Need accountability? Leave a comment when you’re done with YOUR weekly real food meal plan. I’m waiting to hear from you…
Thanks for reading, and happy planning!
31 Responses
Liz, love the meal plan! Keep them coming. As a busy mom (is there another kind?), making the transition to Paleo is a challenge. Having something like this is a big help.
That’s amazing to hear, Ruth! I’ll keep ’em coming, and hopefully improve upon the system so folks can more easily save and refer back to them 🙂 I’ll try to track the time and $ investment too, when I have time to add a little more to my plate 🙂
YOU, my friend, are amazing 🙂 I adore you so much!
Likewise, my dear!
Love this – thanks for sharing. What do you put in your sardine salad?
It all depends on what I have on hand! Sometimes lettuce (although I go lettuce-free sometimes!) hard boiled eggs, avocado, dried fruit from StevesPaleoGoods.com, a handful of nuts, plenty of Kasandrinos EVOO, shaved beets and carrots…anything goes!
Meal planning is a must! (At least in my world it is!) Thanks so much for sharing your plan & template!
Love the meal plan Liz and thanks so much for the link love!
I really appreciate you sharing your ideas. I adore the Balanced Bites podcast and your sweet humor. Thanks for keeping it real:-)
Thank you so much, Andrea!
Thanks for sharing Liz – meal planning and batch cooking make life much easier!
btw. do you have some snacks in between like fruits/nuts/chocolate or do you stick to 3 meals a day?
Hey Olga! I rarely snack, but I added a little blurb to the post about what I do in a pinch – nuts, PaleoKits, hard boiled eggs, fruit, and Exo Cricket Flour bars 🙂
Hi Liz,
I’m basically new to the world of Paleo and I’m loving all the tips from incredible blogs such as yours. But, what I’m most excited about, and jumping up and down with joy about, is that I’ve won “two” copies of your book! BE STILL MY HEART! I’ve already converted a friend, a very ill friend to Paleo, and a neighbor, so one of your books, when they arrive, will be a loaner going to my converts to read. The other I will devour myself. I can hardly wait to get them from the publisher. Since you have an “in” with your publisher, please tell ’em to hurry!! LOL Once the book(s) arrive I’ll be doing a post about them, linking to you and the sites where I won them. I’ll also leave a good book review once I’ve read your book. I’m so excited to have found you and the Paleo community!!
Thank you SO much Betty Jo! Wow, TWO books? Meant to be! Hooray! I’ll nudge them along if I can 🙂
Can you offer a substitute for sardines?
Whatever you like, Annette. Chicken, salmon, beef…they aren’t the same nutritionally, necessarily, but you can feel free to modify this to suit you!
I’m a big believer in meal planning – I have been doing a weekly menu and shopping list for years! It’s just so nice to have several options and all the ingredients to make each one. The colcannon sounds goooood!
Such great tips! I’ve been meal planning since my pre paleo days but and I truly believe it made my transition to the paleo lifestyle 1000 times easier. Your meal plan template is much cuter than the one I made for myself but hey, it works 🙂
Holy Guacamole!! This is all kinds of amazing! I’ve tried following so many paleo meal plans & planners. They have never worked well for me. The simplilcity of this is fantastical. I am in love with you…Thank you!!
Liz – I can’t find your e-mail adress anywhere but I would like to ask you something – I am interested in volunteering on farm during summer months. Do you know any farmer that would like some help in return for accommodation and food? I am looking for a farms where people take care of nutrition and all of those things that we talk in paleopsphere.
Hi Olga! I actually don’t publish my email address, as I’m unable to respond to personal 1:1 inquiries 🙂 So you’re welcome to ask questions here, on the blog or on the facebook page. I unfortunately don’t know of any farmers/farms, but you could check EatWild.com for a farm near you and contact them to see if they do something like that 🙂
Olga, Check the Weston A Price website, westonaprice.org. In the back of each of their quarterly journals they have some farmers and farms that may be looking for help. The next journal should be coming out soon.
Thanks for posting this! I have been eating Paleo for about 4 months and you would not believe how hard it is to find a good paleo meal plan out there. I love seeing the ideas. I am really religious about planning out dinners, but I need to be better at breakfasts and lunches. I work from home, so you know how it goes. You just kind of end up grabbing a mish mash of things. I think if I plan out daytime meals, I’ll be more consistent about well rounded paleo meals during the day. Thanks Liz!
So…I just ate a tin of sardines with raw sauerkraut. I feel so legit now.
PS: I like the weekly meal plans. It is cool to see how you eat day in day out. 🙂
LEGIT! 🙂
This is so very helpful. I’m very grateful for this. Makes things so much easier and keeps it interesting. Thank You!! 🙂
I clicked on the link above where you said old meal plans were but they were not there. The link took me to what looked like this very same page: READ “THE RULES” & ACCESS OLD PLANS HERE.) Am I doing something wrong? Thanks.
Nope, you’re not doing anything wrong. The page is quite similar, re-iterating much of the information I put in the meal plan post itself. (I originally had different and expanded information there, but when I published meal plan #1 I soon realized that people didn’t tend to navigate away to read it, so to avoid answering questions that were already answered there, I simply re-iterated some of the same information on this meal plan post. Also, I’ve actually only done the one meal plan so far (hence it being called meal plan #1, haha 🙂 … if you scroll down on the page you’re referring to, you’ll see I linked meal plan #1 towards the bottom. I will continue to link the meal plans as I release them on that one page so that they remain accessible en masse. Sorry for the confusion!
Hi, looking over your meal plan.
Do you only have one entree per meal, or do you add veges, etc. to your dinner meals?
Many of these meals have veggies “inside” the entree – for example, I use chopped carrot, tomato, peppers and onion in my chili. Of course, if I feel like adding some extra veggies at dinner, I definitely will.
Just an FYI for anyone that doesn’t like expresso you might want to consider using unsweetened cocoa.